OLD FAMILIES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 100, 30 April 1927, Page 6

OLD FAMILIES

ROMANCE OF ENCLI6H

FAMILIES

THREATENED WITH EXTER-

MINATION

The last Squires are slowly riding to the sea, says Mr. Chesterton in one of his poignaDt modern ballade. The cost of living and even the co«t of dying, the failure of heirs and even the failure of heritage have brought unnumbered families of the old stock in England low. In the old days three generations of spendthrifts were needed to wreck a great landed property. Now the normal working of the death duties will achieve the same, writes Shane Leslie in the "Weekly Dispatch.'? There is a tremendous pathos in the undermining and disappearance from the .land of so many families, whose romance and chivalry have never failed. Tragedy and vicissitude have been theirs, gut general collapse and extermination have never threatened them before. The Peerage does not comprise all the old or even great families. A discerning Prime Minister can award a but he can no more distribute 'the old blood or give an honoured coitnty name than a trainer can elevate a mule or a cart horse to the pedigree of a' racehors in the Stud Book. The old stock is more easily connoted with the land than with titles. The most interesting and trustworthy book of family heraldry is worth recalling, since it seldom comes into the bookstal—Evelyn Philip Shirley's "Noble and Gentlemen of England." Shirlev was once described in a novel by Disraeli as "Mr. Ardenne,," the man who knew everybody's pedigree. Shirley published in 1860 the arms and register of the surviving families who had been established on the land before 1500 A.D. As he ignored a number of important and even ducal families who were descended in, the female line or under the bar sinister, there was considerable indignation roused. No Grafton! No Northumberland! No. St. Albans! On the other hand many a poor parson and gentleman yeoman" was figured under his proper blason. Northumberland was excluded because the Percy blood had passed on the distaff side to a worthy Smithson, who, when he reminded the King Goerge 111. that he was the first duke of the name without the Garter, was answered that he was .also the first duke of the name who was a Smithson. Bastard of Kitly, having held manors under the Conqueror, preferred to decline a baronetcy from the same King George. Graf ton and St. Albans could be excluded by the strict science of heraldry, but not from the romance of England, for they were both descended from Charles 11.,'' Graf ton by the faseinatipg Barbara Viliers. As Lady Castlemaine she' survives in the pictures of Lely and the diaries of Pepys. Her father was a Lord Grandison, recorded by Shirley under the old Villiers stock. She showed that the nobility could produce as splendid a courtesan as any French adventuress. Scropo of Danby, esquire, has an unknown descent from the Conquest and the best arms in England, the "Bend Or," awarded 1 by the Court of Chivalry in 1390. Only a regicide tarnishes the great register of Scropes in Church and State. Mr. Scrope of Danby is yet the first name in Yorkshire arid the first commoner in England. - . Tho heraldry of. these uripecraged families is always... -of-the. simplest 'compared to the complicated and ludicrous coats which are granted as though to make up for the absence of any arms in preceding generations. Many of the armß in Shirley were good enough to be shared. Lumleys and Curzons shared ,the popinjays. Chess j-ooks were taken by Bunburys and Bodcnhams as well as by the Walcots of Bitterley, who claimed theirs through a Walcot, who had succedod in checkmating Henry V. with a simple rook! Perhaps the oldest canting arms nre those of Arundell of Wardour: "The Great Arundells," who carry six martlets or "hirondelles" on their coat. From their stock sprang Isabel Lady Burton, whose romance with Sir Richard Burton must be accounted one of the love stories of the ninteenth century.. With Shirley's book on the old families -surviving from before the Befornia-' tion read the fascinating book about sacrilege by Sir Henry Spelman, on the curses which were supposed to have attached themselves to acquirers of church land. However, in spite of many an abbot's curse, a p.e\v gentry and aristocracy grew up with Protestantism, who for three centuries have owned and ruled I the shires until ii seems as though their time had now come. Fast ihey are giving way to the wealthy profiteers and manufacturers and Lords of Finance. ' England moves along with her own pageant. The peerage changes and is renewed from every class and trade, as freely from American or Jewish blood as from any other. Bnt the old families cannot change. Like the Old Guard, they can only sink into the soil loaving their blazonry to fade upon the hatchments, and stained glass in churches. The peerage cannot add to their numbers nor to their honours Their names will remain with the counl try-folk whom thy traind to plough aUd. .J cd to the wars. Their tragedies and their romance pass to the poets and writers of another age.